PayPal Hires Apple Vet Allison Johnson as Its First CMO in 6 Years

Allison Johnson, the soon-to-be CMO of PayPal.

Courtesy of Allison Johnson

PayPal is adding a major player to its marketing department: Today, the company announced the hiring of Allison Johnson as CMO and executive vice president. The brand has been without a CMO since 2013.

Johnson joins PayPal from West, a marketing and venture capital firm where she worked with clients like Square, Twitter and Braintree, which was acquired by PayPal in 2014. In this new role, she’ll work out of the company’s San Jose, Calif., office and report to CEO Dan Schulman. According to a press release, she will “lead strategic marketing for PayPal and its family of brands around the world.”

“Allison is a highly experienced, much-admired marketing leader with a proven track record of building global brands, making her a natural addition to our leadership team,” Schulman said of Johnson’s hiring in a statement accompanying the announcement. “PayPal has made strong progress over the past several years to advance our position as the leading digital payments platform and one of the most dynamic and valuable brands in the world. Allison’s experience and vision will build on that progress and help propel PayPal forward during our next phase of growth.”

Johnson is no stranger to marketing in the tech world: For six years—from 2005 to 2011—she served as the president of worldwide marketing communications for Apple, where she worked on the campaigns that launched now-household name products, like the iPhone and iPad. Before joining the team at Apple, she was the senior vice president of global brand marketing for HP.

“I’m proud to be joining a company committed to expanding participation in the global economy through innovative and inclusive payment products and services,” said Johnson in a statement. “I was an early convert to PayPal’s vision of fast, secure online payments. I’m thrilled to have the opportunity to work with this remarkable team to accelerate PayPal’s growth as we continue to define the future of global payments.”

Putting more muscle in the marketing department is starting to be something of a Silicon Valley trend: Pinterest recently hired its first CMO last fall.

Diana Pearl

@dianapearl_

Diana is a staff writer for Adweek.